Ramona and Misha

Sometimes the stars align. There is always a moment in time when some stars align. Isn’t there?

What do we know of science as the description of the Laws of our Nature, except as explanations of a logic and design we know to be there, within us and expressed everywhere?

Ramona had the name Misha in her mind from the earliest time she could remember. Now she is 28. This time the man’s name was shown in a television news report, and connected, though not clearly, with a stream of terrible deeds – bombings, rebellions, a hatred and bitterness which belied a true patriotism based in love. Love is hard-won, she knew.

Her father was a newspaper man. He had started his own paper, with a passion for the Press and the news of the people, for the people, when he was in his thirties. Not much older than she is now.  Does she feel such passion? Her mother, dark-eyed and quiet, was not so expressive in the streets, but her intensity burned within her. As she grew older, she walked faster, holding her purse or her shopping bag closer and more tightly, thinking and observing with an intensity that was nearly audible.

I do not know these people. Do you? Yet I feel I do. I awake with a dream, and Ramona is telling me her story. I see her sad mother, her passionate father, her architectural dreams as they unveil themselves in modeled beauty beyond the rubble and rainbows of her memories.

This morning Ramona told me, shortly before I awoke, how she had seen fleeting pictures of Misha in her mind, and how the television stories confused her. Did you see them? She asked me, intensely, as her mother might, if she spoke at all. I nodded. What must they mean? She asked. We are told to raise ourselves in the way we should go. Somehow he has lost his way. To be lost in the city, in the world in which you are born, is to find yourself strapped to a missile, a bombshell, a fragment of a life which you cannot fully believe is all there is to you. Yet you continue, until love finds you – until you let love’s seed, which begins with each mother, begin to breed, to breathe, and sprout new green growth with sunlight’s chemical coronation into life, as if beginning anew but forgetting only what has created destruction. The stars align, this time.

A motorcycle roars into the scene, out of my dream. There is infinite optimism in the way the crowd cheers, even as the roar reminds some of the lions from the sudden jungle. Others relate to memories of starbursts, Fourth of July’s festivities which most often bring on happy excellent independence pride and a whole legacy of heroes. Gunfire pops and bursts remind some minds of assault, hurt, others of flowered paintings which they prefer: oversized poppies, and mountain ranges covered with raging blooms overtaking each other in an avalanche of color.

Take my hand, I say, and she smiles.

We awake together, one of us material and physical, the other purely dream, and I smell breakfast as she disappears into her own world of dream, the passion of poppies and the press and a hope to soften her mother’s sadness as she seeks the truth of Misha’s rebellion. Love lives in the neural tunnels, she says, turning down a side street she remembers from when she was a child. I have no fear of searching. Those days are over. Don’t you read the papers? We must have the courage to love, above all.

We are all Humans, Being

Continuing my thinking about what it means to live as an ethical being, to love with a whole heart, a whole mind, a whole body. This means that we know who we are – i.e., we know what we are designed to be, that we are designed through the love, truth & perfection of the Creator, with absolute loving intention. This means that I acknowledge the truth of my own creation, which means I acknowledge that I am my own creator, endowed by my Creator with these “inalienable rights.” It is to know who we are.

In the same way that I remember Mom and Dad encouraging us to “always remember who you are,” this is the pattern of learning to acknowledge our lineage, or our human heritage. I have within my mind a beautiful image, imprint of Dad in the hospital and in the nursing home, at times when staff people asked him questions and he was aware of not having the same physical memory as he’d had before in his life – I am Henry Martin, he’d say, with a bright smile; I was born on March 7, 1923, and I live at _______________. It just brought a smile to his face to know, with his wonderful humor, and also brought a smile to anyone who was listening. This is how I feel as I learn to “know the truth of who I am.”  I imagine this is the same image, too, for those who adopt children, or those who have been adopted and are compelled to also know the origins of their birth. We all seek to find the source of “True Love,” because we are designed to be loving beings  - to feel the freedom and joy of expressing and sharing love, and therefore the love of learning together. We are humans, being.

This is why the family is our beginning unit or image of unity – the “nuclear family.”  Even that image, of “nuclear power,” is another way for us to sense, to know, to explore that absolute power inherent in the design of cells, cell bodies, clusters, larger bodies, all the way into the Universal bodies of stars, planets, every other elemental expression that lives in the time and space as it is created, with the potential of destruction as well as celebration (both are creation).

Tick-Tock

Imaging

Imagination

Incarceration

Incantation

Reverberation

Revelation

Optimization

Celebration

Andromeda always thought of herself as a normal young woman with a job she likes (at an advertising agency), and a dog she called Chip (off the old block). She is not married, but loves and lives with Mike, has loved and lived with him for about 5 years now. Life is busy, beckoning her on, into her future, as time hurtles on. She is 33.  People nod and imply and mention her biological clock tick-tocking, and aren’t they going to get married, aren’t they going to have children? Can they hear her clock, she wonders? The tick-tock metronome of life is the steady drum of a heartbeat, sometimes loud and reverberating in her head, her ears the canals that invite all sounds until she has to will them closed. In her dreams the tick-tock is expansive as the world itself, the ocean, as if she herself is a wave, her cells wild and blue, each syllable surfing waves both familiar and thrillingly new.

What We Want

Show me the modern mind, Andromeda says, like a mantra, saturated with color and eager for more.  All fairy tales begin as myths, which begin as dreams, whose roots are ancient memories of trees in our minds.  Like a Jackson Pollock, we drip paint; like a Cecil Beaton we fabricate images; like a Buster Keaton, we keep falling to learn how to land.  The brand we create is the brand we become. Are we all genetic engineers, altering a litany of variables to find the most perfect version of ourselves? We live to satisfy our cravings, but let experts guide us into “what we want.”

Feel your way

(our cells live as chemical energy fields)

Feel your way.

The fear part

Later gives way to fine art

     Giving love boats

     Bread crusts

     Wine sips

     Pearl drops

     Ice cream

     Dreams

Of delightful

     consumption.

Meanwhile the Goldenrod

Recently I have begun to appreciate more deeply and more consciously how perfect it is that change is part of our design to grow as evolving consciousness. I know of several people who have died in the past few weeks, people who were close to friends of mine. As each person has shared their perception and feelings about the sudden changes in and of life, I have thought more about what I have learned in my life, so far, about change, about life and death, about the joy potential of living each moment.  As my parents lived their deaths, they helped me to learn about my own beliefs about life and about death (change), and about what commitment to life means. Each thought, word, and action is a symphony within itself that reverberates as our life imprint. (Sound empty, like so many “campaign” words?) Keep thinking. Do you really believe that?

Each dose of a drug my parents’ doctors prescribed, for example, came with its own provenance – it s own realm of creation, intention, purpose, and potential effects. As I researched and read labels to better understand the world of pharmacology, I became more aware of my own beliefs about “the unknown” and my own strength of mind to know that knowledge gained is power to be used through the freedom we each have to choose and to improve the quality of our life through our choices. I understand now, that this is the same pattern of change I began to learn, accept, and live in relationship to food, water, and all manner of ingesting and inhaling. Think, choose, do – as we gain knowledge, our behavior will change, IF we are growing. We will feel differently, happier, IF we are growing. We will begin to know our own strength, and the equal strength of others as human beings, to choose and to Do.

What will happen if “we” don’t take this, don’t do this, as recommended?

What could happen if we do?

How do I feel about these thoughts and potentials of reality?

“We have to follow the rules.” Who made the rules and why?

What are we being loyal to and why?

What motivates me to change?

Am I afraid or excited about change?

Do I know and trust my Soul and Spirit mind beyond my physical mind? 

How do I feel?

Since I’m fifty years old now (! – actually, we triplets have always multiplied our age by 3, so that makes me 150) and both of our parents have died, I have a different reference point than even a few years ago. The motivation to learn more, to share more, to trust more in the gift of the Spirit mind that we are given to help guide us as we are open to learning and growing (changing), is a deep, deep river of energy that is as calming as the ocean can be to the mind that loves to hear the wind, to see the sparkles of light dancing off of the waves, taste the salt of endless travel in experienced water that remembers power and the purity of light and movement.  Little glimmers of fear that I feel in moments of “what if”, I recognize now as eternal seeds of promise given to me as invitations to “let go” and trust, know love, enjoy the spontaneous energy of life itself, always creating. 

I just had notice from a County official about overdue property taxes. At first I was confused.  What? With that, a slight glimmer of fear of, oh no, I don’t have that! Then, the calming of – simply take the steps of thinking, communicating, resolving. The choosing and doing that life is made of.  As we learn and grow as a mind, with love as our guide, we begin to civilize ourselves. Most parents know this well! The step-by-step creating of day-by-day life is what makes a life, builds a legacy of energy that lives on. As I watch the news (which I do a lot), I am so conscious of the different energies we present as the world and which we choose to focus on. This morning, as part of the CNN Heroes updates, I heard a story about an Afghan woman who moved back to Afghanistan after living in the US for 38 years. She moved because, as she said, she wanted to show the world that all Muslims are not terrorists. She opened a school for Afghan girls.  http://www.raziasrayofhope.org/about-the-foundation.html  $300 educates one Afghan girl for one year. That puts dollars into another perspective.

This is an example to me of one woman, and all of those she has magnetized (inspired) to support her cause of positive change for humankind, who has chosen to commit her efforts to change and growth by DOING. “Change is growth; therefore, if we are open to change we will always grow. Once we accept change, the only requirement for growth is the commitment that we must make to the doing.”  (Bridges of Consciousness, ix-x)  As I’m reading Kathy Oddenino’s second book, Bridges of Consciousness, I’m thinking of all of these things. I’m reading another phrase I read once – “the illusion of death does not change what is.” I am so grateful to have chosen to expose myself to the knowledge of who we are as consciousness – to challenge my mind to think beyond where I have thought before.

As we talked about death and change, a friend asked me how I know that death is not terrible (as I haven’t experienced it). My answer was that I have learned, so far, and through studying Spiritual Philosophy, that I create my own reality and through my physical experience I live each pattern of change and growth as a spiritual being – so what happens (as I create and experience life, change) as I live and change, day by day, through all interaction and relationships, teaches me that all change happens in the same ways. We get better at it at the most profound levels, if we can recognize the value of change for us. Loss is real as change happens, but what we gain through understanding of energy that we share and that we are encompasses loss the way a wonderful warm hug from a mother or friend or lover does in the moment we feel the love shared.

Meanwhile, the goldenrod we planted last week is urging its buds into bloom, and that makes me smile. Rain drips a bit after the hard rain (which was welcome), and the trees stand tall still as the seasons change, moment by moment.